Pocket Bookclub gets bloody and goes to hell

This month the Pocket Bookclub dove into a vat of bloody organs and the genre of crime fiction with Hades by Candice Fox.

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Homicide detective Frank Bennett has an intriguing new partner. Dark, beautiful, coldly efficient, Eden Archer is one of the most enigmatic colleagues Frank has ever worked with—that includes her brother Eric, who’s also on the Sydney Metro police force. All of them are tested to the core when a local man discovers a graveyard of large steel toolboxes lying at the bottom of the harbour. Each box contains a grisly trove of human body parts.

For Frank, the madman’s clues are a tantalizing puzzle. For Eden and Eric, the case holds chilling links to a scarred childhood—and a murderous mentor named Hades. But the true evil goes beyond the bloody handiwork of a serial killer…

Why do people read dark fiction? Do we like to scare ourselves? Our lives are devoid of real and present danger. Watching the news may make us think we could be the victim of a serial killer. It happens to real people. The truth is our demise is likely to be more ordinary. Do we need to be frightened to appreciate our relative safety?

Did this book frighten us?  Gillian admitted to having to go upstairs and find people. Being along was too scary.

 

Sue was frightened by the smirks. She counted eight and only one used correctly.

A least one of us was troubled by the sex-obsessed misogynist protagonist.

Anne, our nurse was most disturbed the lack of credibility to the medical procedures. To be fair I don’t think the author was going for medical credibility and the procedures were not entirely successful.

This book is a page-turner.  Most of our members read it in a few days. Marianne read it all the way to China and claims it is a good aeroplane book. You are not alone on the plane. Also, you might not think about falling out of the sky if you are contemplating this gristle and horror.

I was struck by the similarities between Hades and the television series Dexter. Vengeful killers born in a pool of blood.

Hades was Dee’s choice and it one of her favourite books of all time.  Most of us would not have picked this book up to read. But that is the point of the Pocket Bookclub. To stretch us beyond our usual reading comfort zones.

Out next read it Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve. I was loitering around Goodreads Listopia recently and realised just how many dystopian books I have read. Why do people read dystopian fiction? Do we need to be frightened out of our safe reality…

 

 

 

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